U.S. circuit court gives St. Vincent appeal new life

The St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen, whose case seeking to remain on Cliff Street appeared to be all but dead, got a boost Wednesday.

An appeal by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich to keep the soup kitchen open was dismissed by a federal court in March. But, on Wednesday, a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York remanded the case back to Judge Warren W. Eginton at the U.S. District Court in Bridgeport. That sets the stage for a possible trial.

Brian Smith, a partner at Hartford-based Robinson & Cole law firm who represents the diocese, called the ruling a victory.

“We count it as a win,” he said Thursday. “The case was dismissed, and we had nothing. But now we have a live case and could go to trial to see if we can win. We were dead in the water on this.”

The proceedings trace back to mid-December, when the Commission on the City Plan unanimously voted to reject a special use permit that would have allowed the diocesan ministry to permanently operate out of St. Joseph School on Cliff Street.

Lawyers for the diocese filed an appeal in early January, which Eginton later tossed on the grounds that officials had not exhausted all local administrative options before seeking intervention by the court.

In Sept. 23 briefs filed ahead of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Smith and the diocese said the commission’s vote “inflicted immediate injury on St. Vincent and the church from the date of denial.”

But attorneys for the city argue the diocese’s subsequent denial on May 14 of a use variance by the Zoning Board of Appeals makes its appeal “moot.”

“This case is not rendered moot by the board’s denial of the use variance application, because the denials of the special permit and use variance were rendered by different agencies, under different criteria on different grounds,” the diocese urged in its Sept. 23 brief.

Two other soup-kitchen related cases — appeals of the use variance denial and zoning violation letters to the ministry from the city — have been consolidated and are pending in the U.S. District Court in New Haven.

Michael Zizka, an attorney representing the city, could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Norwich resident Brian Kobylarz, who lives on Hobart Avenue nearby the soup kitchen, said reopening the special use permit case is “delaying the inevitable.”

He believes the city’s reasons for rejecting the soup kitchen in the first place — its perceived disharmony with the neighborhood and clash with the Plan of Conservation and Development — will prevail.

“There’s a legal group that is trying to argue that a religious entity has veto power over a municipality that flies in the face of whatever damage they may cause to others and saying that is a superior right of theirs,” Kobylarz said.

Kobylarz said he supports St. Vincent de Paul’s mission and hopes to see a resolution that is good for both sides.

“They are answering a social need, and you certainly don’t want to cause damage to other human beings,” he said. “So we really need to feel they are engaged in a partnership with everybody to find a solution. And that’s not simply to say, ‘We’re not moving.’ ”